NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Scan

The default mode,
scan simply reads an NTFS Volume and looks for files that have been deleted. Then it
will print a list giving the inode number, name and size.

Undelete

The
undelete mode takes the files either matching the regular expression (option -m)
or specified by the inode-expressions and recovers as much of the data
as possible. It saves the result to another location. Partly for
safety, but mostly because NTFS write support isn’t finished.

Copy

This is a wizard’s option. It will save a portion of the MFT to a file. This
probably only be useful when debugging
ntfsundelete

Notes

ntfsundelete only ever
reads from the NTFS Volume.
ntfsundelete will never change the volume.

CAVEATS

Miracles

ntfsundelete cannot perform the impossible.

When a file is deleted the MFT Record is marked as not in use and the bitmap
representing the disk usage is updated. If the power isn’t turned off
immediately, the free space, where the file used to live, may become
overwritten. Worse, the MFT Record may be reused for another file. If this
happens it is impossible to tell where the file was on disk.

Even if all the clusters of a file are not in use, there is no guarantee that
they haven’t been overwritten by some short-lived file.

Locale

In NTFS all the filenames are stored as Unicode. They will be converted into
the current locale for display by
ntfsundelete. The utility has successfully displayed some Chinese pictogram filenames and then
correctly recovered them.

Extended MFT Records

In rare circumstances, a single MFT Record will not be large enough to hold the
metadata describing a file (a file would have to be in hundreds of fragments
for this to happen). In these cases one MFT record may hold the filename, but
another will hold the information about the data.
ntfsundelete will not try and piece together such records. It will simply show unnamed files
with data.

Compressed and Encrypted Files

ntfsundelete cannot recover compressed or encrypted files. When scanning for them, it will
display as being 0% recoverable.

The Recovered File’s Size and Date

To recover a file
ntfsundelete has to read the file’s metadata. Unfortunately, this isn’t always intact.
When a file is deleted, the metadata can be left in an inconsistent state. e.g.
the file size may be zero; the dates of the file may be set to the time it was
deleted, or random.
To be safe
ntfsundelete will pick the largest file size it finds and write that to disk. It will also
try and set the file’s date to the last modified date. This date may be the
correct last modified date, or something unexpected.

OPTIONS

Below is a summary of all the options that
ntfsundelete accepts. All options have two equivalent names. The short name is preceded by
- and the long name is preceded by
--. Any single letter options, that don’t take an argument, can be combined into a
single command, e.g.
-fv is equivalent to
-f -v. Long named options can be abbreviated to any unique prefix of their name.

-b NUM

--byte NUM

If any clusters of the file cannot be recovered, the missing parts will be
filled with this byte. The default is zeros.

-C

--case

When scanning an NTFS volume, any filename matching (using the
--match option) is case-insensitive. This option makes the matching case-sensitive.

-c RANGE

--copy RANGE

This wizard’s option will write a block of MFT FILE records to a file. The
default file is
mft which will be created in the current directory. This option can be combined
with the
--output and
--destination options.

-d DIR

--destination DIR

This option controls where to put the output file of the
--undelete and
--copy options.

-f

--force

This will override some sensible defaults, such as not overwriting an existing
file. Use this option with caution.

-h

--help

Show a list of options with a brief description of each one.

-i RANGE

--inodes RANGE

Recover the files with these inode numbers.
RANGE can be a single inode number, several numbers separated by commas "," or a
range separated by a dash "-".

-m PATTERN

--match PATTERN

Filter the output by only looking for matching filenames. The pattern can include the
wildcards ’?’, match exactly one character or ’*’, match zero or more
characters. By default the matching is case-insensitive. To make the search
case sensitive, use the
--case option.

-o FILE

--output FILE

Use this option to set name of output file that
--undelete or
--copy will create.

-p NUM

--percentage NUM

Filter the output of the
--scan option, by only matching files with a certain amount of recoverable content.
Please read the caveats section for more details.

-q

--quiet

Reduce the amount of output to a minimum. Naturally, it doesn’t make sense to
combine this option with
--scan.

-s

--scan

Search through an NTFS volume and print a list of files that could be recovered.
This is the default action of
ntfsundelete. This list can be filtered by filename, size, percentage recoverable or last
modification time, using the
--match,
--size,
--percent and
--time options, respectively.

The percentage field shows how much of the file can potentially be recovered.

-S RANGE

--size RANGE

Filter the output of the
--scan option, by looking for a particular range of file sizes. The range may be
specified as two numbers separated by a ’-’. The sizes may be abbreviated
using the suffixes k, m, g, t, for kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes
respectively.

-t SINCE

--time SINCE

Filter the output of the
--scan option. Only match files that have been altered since this time. The time must
be given as number using a suffix of d, w, m, y for days, weeks, months or years
ago.

-T

--truncate

If
ntfsundelete is confident about the size of a deleted file, then it will restore the file to
exactly that size. The default behaviour is to round up the size to the nearest
cluster (which will be a multiple of 512 bytes).

-u

--undelete

Select
undelete mode. You can specify the files to be recovered using by using
--match or
--inodes options. This option can be combined with
--output,
--destination, and
--byte.

When the file is recovered it will be given its original name, unless the
--output option is used.

-v

--verbose

Increase the amount of output that
ntfsundelete prints.

-V

--version

Show the version number, copyright and license
ntfsundelete.

EXAMPLES

Look for deleted files on /dev/hda1.

ntfsundelete /dev/hda1

Look for deleted documents on /dev/hda1.

ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -s -m ’*.doc’

Look for deleted files between 5000 and 6000000 bytes, with at least 90% of the
data recoverable, on /dev/hda1.

ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -S 5k-6m -p 90

Look for deleted files altered in the last two days

ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -t 2d

Undelete inodes 2, 5 and 100 to 131 of device /dev/sda1

ntfsundelete /dev/sda1 -u -i 2,5,100-131

Undelete inode number 3689, call the file ’work.doc’ and put it in the user’s
home directory.

ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -u -i 3689 -o work.doc -d ~

Save MFT Records 3689 to 3690 to a file ’debug’

ntfsundelete /dev/hda1 -c 3689-3690 -o debug

BUGS

There are some small limitations to this program, but currently no known bugs.
If you find one, please send an email to
linux-ntfs-dev@lists.sourceforge.net

AUTHORS

ntfsundelete was written by Richard Russon (FlatCap) and Holger Ohmacht.

AVAILABILITY

ntfsundelete is part of the ntfsprogs package and is available from
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net